Crossing the river

It's just one month till christmas, and I am determined to be out of morbid obesity again before having to face those opulent dinners that invariably come with that holiday. So, I have been sticking to below 1500 calories a day for about a week now, and I am beginning to see results. This morning, the scale showed me a weight below that dreaded point of obesity for the first time in several months. What with the wild fluctuations I had lately, that doesn't mean I am out of obesity yet, but it does at least indicate that what I am doing is beginning to work.
Norma has been posting about FOMO and YOLO as obstacles to weight loss. I had to think hard at first what these might mean.
Fear Of Missing Out. You Only Live Once.
I, too, have been guilty of turning these into excuses for overeating.
But what do they really amount to?
There may be situations where FOMO might even be justified.
For me, one such situation came last year when DH took me to the town where he had been studying. They have a cafe there that sells what just might be the best cakes ever. DH had been rhapsodizing them ever since we met, so, visiting that town meant visiting that cafe. We haven't been to that place together before, and we are not likely to get back there within the next, say, twenty years. In that case, I would have missed out on my only chance of tasting those cakes.So, I did indulge myself, and that indulgence had little effect on my overall weight because it happened only once.
But if, say, DH were buying himself a box of frosted donuts at the supermarket, FOMO would in no way be justified. They sold those things yesterday, they will sell them tomorrow, so I would be able to eat some as often as I wished.
And that is the point where the line must be drawn. Only if it is really something that you will never again be able to eat if you don't eat it right now, can FOMO be a valid reason to eat something that would be off-limits otherwise. The point being the word never. If it is something that comes around every year, like stollen for christmas, I can either plan for it, or feel secure in the knowledge that if I decide to forgo it this year, there'll be another one just like it next year. Either way, FOMO should not be the reason behind the decision made about eating or not eating something that is not on your plan.
Most of all, even if I am deciding not to miss out on a particulat taste experience right now, that must not mean letting go of all the brakes. Two pieces of stollen happen to taste exactly like one piece of stollen, so all you could possibly miss out on by having just one is the feeling of an overstuffed stomach and the calories in that second piece.

And YOLO? I don't ever again want to be third-degree morbidly obese, because I have just that one life to live and that one body I am stuck with.And I know by now that I have been missing out on plenty of things when obese that would have been a lot more enjoyable than anything I might eat.
If I think of that, FOMO and YOLO could just be the reasons I need to stick to my plan this time.



Julia